The Liberating Practices of Sympathetic Joy and Gratitude

Early on in my practice, I had found myself deep in the throes of an inferiority complex. One of my closest friends had just started dating the man that I quietly—and stubbornly—pinned my hopes on for a serious relationship. Never mind that all signs pointed to him not being a great fit for me; I hung on anyway, right up until the moment they got together. I was crushed. To make matters worse, that same friend was launching a successful graphic arts business while my visual arts career was limping along. Meanwhile, two other friends had just gotten engaged, and another was riding high on the stock market while my humble investments took a nosedive during a tech slump. Stuck in a negative feedback loop, I kept running this highlight reel of other people’s wins and my own losses over in my mind until everything in my life began to look like an utter failure.

“All of my friends are falling in love and thriving in their careers,” I complained to my meditation teacher. “But nothing’s happening for me. I’m lonely, and no one wants to buy my paintings. I feel like I’m failing at life while everyone around me is succeeding.” 

As I spoke to my teacher, he stopped me and asked if I had ever practiced “mudita,” or sympathetic joy—one of the four brahmaviharas, or heart practices, in Buddhism that also include loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), and equanimity (upekkha). I had never practiced mudita. He explained that he thought I would benefit from learning how to celebrate the successes of those around me, regardless of my own circumstances. At first, I was skeptical. It felt insurmountable.

In our competitive culture, envy is a tricky but common emotion. Few people want to acknowledge or talk about it. In Buddhism, envy is considered to be one of the root causes of suffering because it’s embedded in the idea of a fixed self that is not enough. It leads to a cycle of comparison, resentment, and even anger. This is why mudita is such a powerful antidote.

The Buddha said that of all the brahmaviharas, sympathetic joy is the hardest one to practice sincerely. If we feel our lives are bereft of joy, we may respond to someone else’s good fortune with self-criticism and comparison. When envy arises, it’s often accompanied by feelings of shame. A cascade of emotions may entangle us and obliterate our intention to practice unselfish joy. When this happens, we need to take a step back and practice self-compassion until the inner emotions are acknowledged and felt. 

I had my first tangible experience of envy as a kid. My best friend and I, along with several other girls, held an impromptu clay sculpture contest one Saturday. When we finished, we carefully displayed our sculptures on cardboard bricks in a friend’s basement. I was convinced I would win. Instead, when the votes were in, I was shocked that my best friend won.

“Wait, what? I was robbed!” I thought to myself. I was crushed and angry. “Surely the girls could see that my sculpture was the best. And how dare my best friend outdo me?” 

This response was partly rooted in my untenable home life at the time, with my parents’ endless fights often erupting into violence. As kids often do, I blamed myself and desperately wanted outside affirmation that I was OK. 

After the contest, we all went outside to play. Still stinging from my loss, I sneaked back into the basement where the sculptures were displayed. I took my friend’s sculpture and smashed it. All traces of the offending sculpture were erased—and for a moment, it felt good.

Then a wave of embarrassment and remorse washed over me. How would my friend feel? What if the girls caught me? I scraped up the remnants of the sculpture and put it back on the brick, hoping it looked like the family dog had done it.

When we gathered back in the basement, I could see the collective disappointment on the other girls’ faces as they saw the smushed sculpture. They had been able to celebrate my best friend’s skillful sculpture with sympathetic joy—but I had only felt envy. This insight touched the vulnerability that lived inside my young heart, although I wasn’t yet ready to find my way to mudita. No one ever figured out that I had smashed the sculpture, and I never confessed.

Years later, after I moved away, my friend wrote me a letter saying that she had always looked up to me—that she thought I was more talented, smarter, and prettier. This shocked me but also touched my heart. I realized we had both quietly envied each other but never acknowledged it aloud.

It’s easy for the heart to turn to envy and lose access to the more expansive state of sympathetic joy. But we can intentionally cultivate this state in our practice, just as the Buddha recommended.

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A key teaching of mudita is that we humans often believe happiness is limited: If others have an abundance and we have little, it means there’s not enough to go around. This mindset of scarcity and comparison may cause the heart to contract and miss out on many of life’s joys and possibilities. 

My teacher suggested I begin my morning meditation with gratitude and mudita practices, which are complementary. I decided it was worth a try. My preoccupation with my “undesirable” circumstances was leading me down a path toward a deep depression I knew so well growing up. I found it increasingly unbearable to hear of my friends’ successes and had even curtailed socializing with them. Not only did I feel “less than” but lonely and isolated too.

Each morning, I settled in by meditating with my breath for a few minutes until I felt my mind slow and my heart steady. Then I would look into my heart and inquire, “What do I have to feel grateful for in this life?” This wasn’t an intellectual exercise of creating lists. Instead, as my heart answered, so many things I had overlooked began to surface: the friends who supported me and showed up when I needed them, the people who believed in me as an artist, a sangha and a practice that helped pull me out of a dangerous depression, good health, and so much more. I began to see how many people supported me as an artist, and ways I could leverage that support to mobilize my career. I stopped focusing on what I lacked and began to bring my energy and attention to the opportunities I had overlooked. 

Sympathetic joy and compassion are close companions on the path.

My propensity to focus on what I was missing diminished. During mudita practice, I brought to mind friends who seemed to have more than I, and I offered them phrases of sympathetic joy: May you be happy, may your happiness grow and not decrease, may you appreciate your good fortune, I’m happy for you. At first this practice felt mechanical. But with each meditation, combined with the gratitude practice, I began to feel genuine happiness for my friends’ successes. I stopped comparing their lives to mine, and I no longer felt the need to begrudge them. The ice melted, and I saw that my life was far richer than I had realized.  

Their circumstances, like mine, were not fixed; our highs and lows, successes and failures, are fluid and ever-changing. Before I began the gratitude and mudita practices, I was caught in the illusion that I saw a true picture of other people’s lives. But those moments are never the whole story, just as difficult times didn’t make up my whole story either. Everything changes, and jealousy may very well be replaced by pity or, if we cultivate compassion, sympathy. Sympathetic joy and compassion are close companions on the path. 

I believe we can all benefit from the practice of mudita to unburden our hearts and minds from everyday comparison and jealousy, and connect to more expansive, open-hearted joy. Mudita freed me up to pursue my own path to fulfillment without concern for how others were, or were not, succeeding. It opened my life to greater well-being and equanimity. As I shifted my attention away from comparison and self-blame, my energy was freed up to pursue fulfilling opportunities that were available to me, rather than what I imagined should be happening. As the Dalai Lama said, “There are so many people in this world, it simply makes sense to make their happiness a source of our own. Then our chances of experiencing joy are enhanced 6 billion-to-one. Those are very good odds.”

Gratitude and Mudita Practices

The Buddha taught that all beings are born with the capacity for joy. The practice of mudita allows us to celebrate the good fortune and happiness of others. This, in turn, opens our own hearts to joy and appreciation as we see the interconnected quality of happiness and how it is not limited to you or to me or to others who may seem more fortunate.

Initially, doing this practice may arouse envy, self-judgment, or aversion if you feel a sense of scarcity in your own life. Before I practiced mudita for my friends, I did a deep gratitude practice for my own good fortune, which I had been overlooking when comparing myself to others. This practice settled my heart and helped me feel full enough to extend appreciative joy to my friends that appeared better off than I at the time.

Gratitude Practice

Begin by taking a few deep breaths. Feel your body on the cushion or chair and relax into your posture. Take a few minutes to settle with your basic practice, such as breath, body, or sound awareness.

As you feel settled, look into your heart and ask yourself, What do I have in my life to be grateful for? Don’t force an answer or make mental lists. Trust your heart to speak when it’s ready. If you don’t receive answers right away, just sit in the silence and refresh the question without demanding answers.

What am I grateful for in this life?

It may take a while, but continue to stay open. Have confidence that the answers will come. When they do, some may not make sense at first, or they might seem out of place. Trust the wisdom in these answers. You may even find gratitude, not only for good fortune but also for hardships that have helped you to awaken more deeply. Allow images, words, associations, and feelings to move through your heart and mind as they point you to the gifts in life you may have overlooked. As the practice begins to bear fruit, allow your heart to be bathed in gratitude.

All of us, no matter how difficult our lives may be, can find something to be grateful for, even if it’s as simple as a cool breeze on a hot day, the love of a pet, or a smile from a stranger. Sometimes, we just need to take the time to find these pockets of joy and appreciation. When we pay attention to them, they grow and fill our hearts.

Mudita Practice

As you did with the gratitude practice, start settling into your meditation by taking several deep breaths and feeling your body on the cushion or floor. Take a few minutes to relax, feeling a sense of ease.

When you’re ready, bring awareness to your heart. Feel what is present in your heart with kindness and nonjudgment. Now visualize a person you know and care about who is in a state of good fortune. Perhaps a loved one, a family member, a good friend, or a teacher. The key is to focus on someone whom you care about and appreciate. As this person comes to mind, visualize them experiencing their good fortune and joy. To make it tangible, perhaps imagine seeing them smiling or in a state of equanimity.

Now feel the space within yourself out of which mudita arises—the goodwill and kindness of the heart. Connect with the intention of these phrases:

Or in Pali:

Feel free to craft your own mudita phrases if you’d like. Keep connected with the intention of opening your heart. As in other concentration practices, refresh the phrases when the mind wanders. Sometimes, heart practices feel dry or empty at first. Even if you notice resistance, aversion, or neutrality, let go of any judgment and gently continue with the phrases. Whatever arises during this practice is OK.

If you’d like to continue this practice, you can then bring mudita to a neutral person, a difficult person, and even yourself. The key is staying connected to your intention of opening the heart to joy and appreciation. Trust the practice is working even if you don’t feel it at first. Give it some time and you’ll feel your heart begin to open to appreciative joy.